How to Start a Profitable For-Profit K-12 School: Use the Ron Paul Curriculum.

Gary North – April 06, 2013

This was posted yesterday.

he other reason is that most parents say “what’s the alternative? I don’t have the time or skill to home school and I can’t take the kids to work.”Gary has talked about this baby sitting or child minding problem. You see it in holidays where parents have to find somewhere to send the kids. The USA has the summer camp tradition. In other countries we have other solutions. Scandals and stories of kids getting lost on such activities pepper the holidays. Also, like all child care, its expensive or run by churches to the horror of the atheists. (For some strange reason the atheist attempts at holiday camps seem to always end in scandal. I wonder why? sac. ) If schooling, as we know it, ends then a half dozen new institutions are needed. As some have noted the libertarian/ Austrian schools solution is not to ask what law is needed but what new business is needed and how do I start it?

Making work places child friendly would also help.

http://www.garynorth.com/members/forum/openthread.cfm?forum=1&ThreadID=33322#166234Let me share with you one of my marketing strategies for the Ron Paul Curriculum. I will contact Christian day schools around the country, especially those that end their programs at the eighth grade. The problem has always been that the schools cannot afford teachers who are well-qualified for teaching in a conventional classroom environment. But that classroom environment is now obsolete. The classroom of the future is going to be a group of students, each sitting at a carrel.

Each carrel will have a laptop computer. This will be connected to WiFi. The student will be enrolled in the Ron Paul Curriculum.

What has been needed is a truly self-taught curriculum. That is what the Ron Paul curriculum offers. So, a school can shift away from the traditional classroom environment. Instead of a teacher droning on and on in front of the class, each student will have a pair of earphones. The student will get the lecture from the RPC videos. The student will also print out primary source documents. These can be printed out on a desktop printer. This cost is about three cents a page.

There are no textbooks. This cuts costs.

The school pays $250 a year for each student, but the school gets an affiliate fee of $125. Net cost: $125. Then the student signs up for each course at $50 per course per year. All of this is charged to the school. So, for a total of $375 per student, or possibly $425 if the student takes six classes, the curriculum problem is solved.

The school can then hire a teacher with a bachelor’s degree, newly minted and probably not worth more than about $35,000 a year. This teacher teaches the largest number of students that the state allows in a classroom. Let us say that this is 35 students per teacher. If each student pays $1000 a year, this will cover the teacher’s salary. But students in private schools are usually forced to pay at least $3000 a year. So, this is certainly enough to pay for the operations of the school. In my opinion, it should be more than enough. The school will become highly profitable. It can cut tuition to $2,500 a year. Maybe it can cut it to $2,000.

The keys to profitability are these: (1) increase the student-to-teacher ratio to the maximum allowable; (2) to hire brand-new teachers who can be paid low salaries, because these teachers are in abundance. This way, the major expense of the operation of any private school is reduced to a minimum, and the student is in no way harmed academically. The student does not need a teacher who has 30 years of experience, and who is paid twice what a brand-new teacher out of some state university is paid.

The teacher will have virtually no input. The teacher has only disciplinary functions. She fulfills a requirement imposed by the state. The teacher is also there to make certain that the insurance company is willing to offer insurance to the school. But for teaching the students, the teacher will have virtually no function. Maybe she will read daily essays. She probably can do that with no problem. But now that computer software is going to be made available that grades the essays, this will not even be required.

Everything is moving towards online teaching, and I intend to make available the Ron Paul Curriculum to every private Christian high school in America. I intend to make it available to private middle schools.

The courses are free from kindergarten through the fifth grade.

So, I do not see any reason why K-12 private schools cannot be made profitable. I think the wave of the future is homeschooling, but there is no question that some parents want to work outside the home, and they want their children to be in a safe environment where a good curriculum is used. As long as a private school, which could be simply a lady down the street, can offer a safe environment for children, the Ron Paul Curriculum can provide a first-rate education.